The specific aims of this research are to investigate the determinants of race-specific and risk-specific neonatal mortality rates among states of the United States in 1980. In particular, white and black neonatal mortality rates classified by birth weight, mother's education, or birth weight and mother's education will be employed as alternative dependent variables in multivariate models to be estimated by the method of ordinary least squares and its modifications. In addition, the education-specific incidence of light births will be studied. Factors that will be emphasized are neonatal intensive care, prenatal care, abortion, and public program measures pertaining to Medicaid, maternal and infant care (M and I) projects, community health centers (CHCs), Federally subsidized family planning services for low-income women, the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC program), and the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. Estimates of the effects of these factors will control for the availability of obstetricians/gynecologists, female poverty and income levels, cigarette smoking, and other basic determinants of neonatal mortality. The regression analyses will capitalize on the significant amount of cross-sectional variation in the explanatory variables at issue. After the regressions are estimated, their coefficients will be applied to national trends in the determinants to "explain" the downward trend in neonatal mortality since 1964. The principal data set to be employed is the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) National Infant Mortality Surveillance (NIMS), which is the first national linkage of birth and death records in the U.S. since 1960. The NIMS constitutes a state data base with race-specific neonatal mortality by birth weight and mother's education.